Since 1985, CCAP has been a recognized world leader in climate and air quality policy and is the only independent, nonprofit think tank working exclusively on those issues at the local, U.S. national and international levels. Learn More »

Welcome to 2020: a pivotal year for countries to substantially ratchet up their ambition under the Paris Agreement. Under the “ratchet mechanism” (illustrated below) countries are expected to submit new or updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that represent a progression compared to the commitments they made in 2015.

Despite COP25 failing to deliver its main objectives, something good came out from Madrid. While outside of the scope of the climate negotiations, the Santiago Action Plan was launched by the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action during the Green Finance Day at COP25. The Santiago Action Plan represents a key step to accelerate... continue reading »

Presenting a “virtual pilot” between Sweden and Chile As showcased in the Nordic Pavilion at COP25 in Madrid, the Swedish Energy Agency and Chile’s Ministry of Energy have worked together to advance an example of a high integrity Article 6 cooperation. With support from CCAP, the virtual pilot is designed to promote higher ambition by... continue reading »

Action is Possible Even as We Wait for Rules After more than 2 weeks, negotiators at COP25 were unable to advance robust rules for carbon markets that meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature increases to well below 2°C. While many negotiators argued for a path forward premised on strong ambition, in the end,... continue reading »

Sometimes we miss good news, even in fighting climate pollution (where good news isn’t very common). This is even more likely if the good news is from a place where common misperceptions suggest that there won’t be good news. For example, did you know that Nigeria has dramatically reduced natural gas flaring? Nigeria is the... continue reading »

[Vea abajo para leer en español] In a display of strong climate leadership, Chile announced this week the close of eight coal power plants over the next 5 years. This landmark announcement falls within Chile’s more ambitious plan of completely phasing out coal plants by 2040 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. This ambitious step... continue reading »